Check out our recent conversation with Gwen Goodkin, award-winning author of fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, teleplays, and stage plays. We discussed the fact that so many of the voices in her powerful new story collection, A Place Remote, are male, identity and cultural appropriation issues, what it means to write bold, and so much more.
Many of the first-person narrators in A Place Remote are men and all very different men at that. How hard is it to write in male voices, and do you prefer writing male to female?
It wasn’t very difficult for me, writing in a male voice. It was the opposite, actually. Freeing. Women’s bodies and minds are constantly policed – we’re told to smile, not be aggressive, appear non-threatening, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, carry ourselves like this, don’t sit like that. From an early age, women are conditioned to be polite, considerate, think of others first, put ourselves, and our needs last. It’s constrictive and tiring, which I think is the point – to keep us focused on the small things.
So, writing in a male voice is like taking off a tight button-down shirt and putting on a T-shirt. There’s a feeling of ease that comes with it, more room to breathe. I do find myself writing more from a female point-of-view these days, which is both a natural evolution of my writing and a purposeful reaction to the political climate and the backward cultural slide so many in power are pushing.
Has anyone ever accused you of identity appropriation, and if so, what do you say to them? And where do you weigh in with cultural appropriation issues, which have been devastating to writers like Jeanine Cummins (American Dirt)?
No one’s accused me of identity appropriation that I know of. I mostly worry about whether I’ve gotten certain details about music or horses or military matters correct and not whether I accurately wrote in the male voice, because I’m fairly confident I did my job with that aspect of the writing.
I have written Latinx characters in my more recent stories because I’ve been a member of a Mexican-American family for sixteen years and have Latinx friends. It would be strange at this point to leave that aspect of my life out of my stories; their absence would almost feel like a denial.
I’m glad you asked me specifically about Jeanine Cummins because, as I said, I’ve been a member of a Mexican-American family for years and I would not have signed on to write the book she did. My husband’s own story is a fascinating one of immigration and the Mexican-American experience and the American Dream. It’s layered and nuanced and not a black-and-white story of good versus bad, where America is good and Mexico is bad. People are tired of that trope because look at America right now. It’s no oasis in the desert.
It offends me that someone would be paid that kind of advance and not put in every effort to write the best book possible. Cummins assumed she could shirk her research duties and make up a clichéd story because people have been doing that for decades and have gotten away with it. And, to be clear, the issue wasn’t so much that she wrote a bad book, the issue was twofold: 1) Any number of talented Latinx writers could have written a much better version of that book for, let’s face it, less money (because they would have been paid less money) and 2) the book was getting the Oprah treatment.
It’s my opinion the debate about matters of cultural appropriation/staying in your lane/cancel culture comes down to power. I think what’s happening now is that people of different cultures and races want to – and should – tell their own stories. Their stories have been taken from them along with their land, their power, their food, their culture, and reframed from a white point-of-view for a white audience. By claiming their stories, they’re claiming their power and I hope it continues.
This is how I saw my writing from a male point-of-view for “A Place Remote.” I was flipping the dynamic of men writing women’s stories. I’m saying, how does it feel to have your voice stolen and your story told in a way that doesn’t always cast you as the hero? For me, this culminated with the story “As I Lay Living.” I wanted to riff off the revered title of an almost godlike male writer. I’ve always thought As I Lay Dying would’ve been better as only the short story from Addie’s point-of-view, so I did that. I took Faulkner’s title and made it my own. It was me thumbing my nose at not only the canon but the gatekeepers of the canon.
My advice as it relates to this topic is pretty simple and straightforward: write the story only you can write. The one you were born to write.
Do the stories in A Place Remote, which take place in Ohio, have anything in common with Sherwood Anderson’s famous collection of stories entitled Winesburg, Ohio (which was published just about 100 years ago)?
I have to be honest and say that I’ve read Winesburg, Ohio once and it was a long time ago. The book wasn’t a presence in my head as I was writing these stories. I hadn’t even considered putting the stories together as a book until most of them were written. I was influenced more by Frank O’Connor, Sarah Orne Jewett and Willa Cather, which might account for the book’s somewhat – vintage? – feel. Of course, Winesburg, Ohio is composed of different characters from the same small Ohio town so there are definite parallels, but it wasn’t jumping-off point for me. What strikes me about the unintentionality of my writing another book set in rural Northwest Ohio so similar in structure to one 100 years old is the constancy of rural life. How a town was and still is a mosaic of voices. That and the fact that change is slow, but can happen. Especially if you consider the main difference between Sherwood Anderson and me. I don’t know that I could have published A Place Remote 100 years ago as a woman. It was a difficult road to publication even in today’s world.
Which of the stories in A Place Remote would make the best movie and why, and how would you cast it?
I have about 20 pages of a script written that’s an adaptation of the triptych of stories in A Place Remote (“The Key,” “Waiver” and “As I Lay Living”). Those three stories span a large period of time, which gives me extra space to work with. The fun of writing an adaptation is that I get to play with the story a bit, make changes to characters and situations. A lot of time what happens is that I take the story a bit further and add to the plot, which is why I think it’s great to adapt short stories – you can add instead of subtract, as is the case with novels. But, I have to say most of the stories in A Place Remote could be adapted for film or stage. “Winnie” I’ve written as both a short film and a one-act play. I’ve adapted “How to Hold it All in” as a feature film. And I would love to see “A Month of Summer” on stage – I’ve written a draft of that play. I had an idea for a web mockumentary featuring the characters from “Last Chance.” So, I’ve done the work, it’s now just a matter of getting a script or play in the right hands.
Your novel-in-progress, “The Plant,” has already won several awards—including an award for the TV pilot that you are writing based on it. Please tell us what the novel and TV pilot will be about and how hard (or easy) it is to jump from one genre to another with the same story.
The Plant is a novel set in the same small town as A Place Remote, at the town’s television factory, which, when you read that, how could it not be a television show? It’s almost too meta and fitting. Two of my grandparents worked at the television factory in my hometown in Ohio. My mom’s mom worked on the line soldering wires and my dad’s dad was an engineer at the plant. That’s me in a nutshell. The push and pull between blue-collar and white-collar, always between two worlds, never quite fitting in either.
I started The Plant as a short story and what happened was questions kept coming up. I’d answer one and ask another until the project grew to become a novel. I first interviewed my grandma, then my grandpa, and got a feel for how they felt about working there, what it was like, a day in the life, and so on. But I wasn’t happy with my first draft, so I thought that if I wrote the television pilot, I would do a better job of hammering out the plot and it would help fix the novel. I’m in a bit of a loop with those two projects, going back and forth between them, so it’s taking longer than anticipated, but I will finish both, likely in 2021.
You recently wrote an essay entitled “On Being Bold.” Can you talk about “boldness” in the context of creative work and why/when it is necessary.
There are different ways to be bold. Boldness doesn’t always mean ‘bold prose.’ In fact, I oftentimes feel that the bolder the prose, the more artificial it feels. Like the writer is trying too hard. It’s a fine line. Sometimes boldness is in the subject matter. Or, as with The Country of the Pointed Firs, boldness of structure. I recently read On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous and, while the prose was quiet, the subject matter was not. Vuong did not pull punches – he didn’t hint at uncomfortable truths or shy away from them. He gave them to the reader straight. That’s boldness. Even though it’s fiction and not “The Truth,” there’s an emotional honesty to it. I see that as a form of respect for the reader. An astute reader wants to come to our work to be challenged, to learn something new about the world or herself, to see life in a different way. When writers are honest and expose the emotional truth of our deepest pain we are committing a bold act because we humans so often work hard to hide the truth from ourselves – and others.
Please tell us what you are working on now.
I am always working on a variety of projects. Right now I’m between versions two and three of The Plant and am working out how best to tell that story. I also finished writing a comedy feature film called “Trust Circle” during quarantine that was a much-needed break from the heaviness. After I polish The Plant – novel and TV script – I will likely return to my screen and stage plays and focus on revising them.
Please tell Occhi readers how we can learn more about you and your work.
The best place to find me is at my website https://www.gwengoodkin.com/ I am also on twitter @gwengoodkin and Instagram @gwengoodkinwriter . I hope to be out in the world again soon and would love to interact with people at bookstores and events, but for now, it’s been nice visiting you in the virtual world.
Photo by Christian O’Grady
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